Mental Models for Leadership in the Modern Age

What’s surprising about these results is that we typically celebrate great entrepreneurs and leaders for being strong-minded and clear-sighted. They’re supposed to be paragons of conviction: decisive and certain. Yet evidence reveals that when business executives compete in tournaments to price products,19 the best strategists are actually slow and

At a high level, the steps of this process are to:

• Observe: Gain situational awareness via all your senses

• Orient: Contextualize what you observe based on everything you know

• Decide: Formulate the optimal course of action

• Act: Execute on your decision without delay

Colonel John Boyd’s OODA loop, Three Years in Mississippi, and Herodotus’ The Persian Wars.